Monday Sept 24, 2012

In the morning we toured the Ilula Hospital. It had just been promoted to a regional hospital and was expanding its services. Most of its patients come for Malaria, TB, Childbirth, Auto Accidents and HIV. They serve a region of about 1,000,000 Tanzanians and have 5,000 in patients and 60,000 out patients every year. A group of doctors from the Twin Cities has provided significant support for the hospital. In addition, they had hopes of starting a nursing school this academic year. The classroom building is done, but the dormitories and food service buildings are incomplete. The government licensing official did not permit them to start this fall without the dorms. Turns out, the contractor has enough of Bega Kwa Bega's money to complete the job but has moved on to another project.

In the afternoon we toured more preaching points and the Image (IM-AH-GAY) Lutheran Secondary School. Opened in 1994, the school has students from 7th grade to 12th grade. The students live on campus. Many of the students are sponsored by congregations in the St. Paul Synod so there is close connection between Minnesota Churches and the Image school. They too have a significant construction project underway. They have a new Library and more teacher/administrator offices under construction. Unfortunately, school was in session so we stayed out of the active academic sections, but got a good feel of how the school has grown to nearly 800 students.

This completed our day in Image/Ilula and we hopped on the bus and headed back to Iringa and the security of our apartments. Once in Iringa we figured out the cash card ATM system. (It is actually fun drawing out TSH 400,000 in cash.) Dan McIntyre had visited the apartment and left a note outlining how to start the Internet. And, we headed up the hill to a nice restaurant to celebrate another victory. There, at the first table, was the Provost of the University with some other visiting Minnesotans from Rush City.

We ate (mostly not chicken as that is all we have had for the past two days) and stopped by a little bistro on the way down the hill for breakfast supplies. We will have go shopping eventually, but for now, we have enough to get through Lunch tomorow. After that, we will be treated to great meals and adventure at the Ruhaha National Park. We leave for Ruhaha about 1:00 PM.